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From Reverend Sharon Grenham-Toze, Anglican Priest and Prison Chaplain:

One of the things I enjoy doing at New Year is indulging in all the ‘review of the year’ programmes and articles that spring up. I usually find I’ve forgotten most things that happened more than a couple of months ago, so a reminder here and there is quite handy!

Looking back, of course, is what most of us do at the turning of the year, before taking a deep breath and being glad for the chance to start again with a clean slate. I haven’t quite mustered up the courage to give up all the things that are bad for me during January, but I know plenty of people who are giving it a try…

Wanting a fresh start seems such a universal sentiment, and yet so many of us are still carrying burdens that have been with us for years. There’s a scene from one of my favourite films - ‘The Mission’ - where a slave-trader, who’s also killed a friend, carries a huge net full of heavy armour as a self-imposed symbol of the weight of guilt he carries. The priest he’s travelling with eventually cuts the net loose, so it falls a long way down a huge waterfall, setting the man free. But the man turns around and goes back for the burden, picks it up again and struggles on, dragging it behind himself once more. He wasn’t yet ready to accept his fresh start, because he didn’t feel he deserved it.

Repeating old patterns, dragging heavy burdens around with us, feeling guilty - oops. That feels a bit uncomfortably familiar. Our New Year’s resolutions won’t stick very long if we’re doing them out of a sense of ‘shoulds and oughts’, or a deep down feeling of not being good enough.

But if you think back only a few days ago, even I can’t forget we were celebrating hope and redemption and love, as demonstrated in a tiny baby lying in a manger. If ever we needed a message that we’re loveable, and ‘good enough’, whatever kind of heavy weight we feel we’re dragging around, then I believe it’s to be found in that gift of God come among us - and it’s a gift for the New Year, in fact for life, not just for Christmas.